Torch Of Freedom Still Lights The Way

For Those Who Have Joined The American Family, Liberty Is Never Taken For Granted.

July 4, 2004|By John Dolen Arts & Features Editor

July Fourth, Independence Day, our day of freedom.

In 1776, it meant Americans were no longer subject to the whims of kings. Today it means Americans are not subject to central committees, tyrannical mullahs or dictators.

Many Americans will pay fleeting heed to this as they scurry to barbecues and beaches today. But for those who've come from elsewhere to our land of freedom, the memories, and sometimes the fears, are never far behind.

So is the gratitude for being able to pursue happiness without being pursued.

While the world's lack of freedom is front page news -- Cuba opposing a pro baseball player's family reunion, a journalist being gunned down in Mexico -- for some, freedom is a lot simpler.

Yaima Falcon has been in Lake Worth only six months, after arriving from Havana. She's so new here she isn't even sure what's done on the Fourth.

But there's one thing she knows she won't have to do -- something she had to do most of her life.

Lie.

"In Cuba, your daily activities are based on a lie, and that's the big difference. If you think one way, like, `I want more opportunities,' you can't express yourself. You have to have one belief, " she says. "And that's what the government wants you to say."

Yaima, 24, notes that people here know about Cuba, "but they don't know about the true life.

"How it is to live there and deal with that, day after day since you were born," she says. "Almost everybody there has to lie all the time."

Falcon works as a program assistant at Lutheran Services in Lake Worth, in an office that helps refugees and asylum seekers find work.

"I'm so happy now, I just want to talk and say what I think -- whenever I want," she says.

Falcon is married to Svetozar Petrov, who is Bulgarian and works at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan. They met in Qatar, where Yaima was a guest worker, and were married in Bulgaria in 2002. Falcon now has refugee status and will apply for U.S. citizenship after a five-year residency here.

Falcon was working for the same hotel chain as her husband but decided on a change.

"I wanted to try something else, and here I can work wherever I want," she says, clearly having gotten the hang of this freedom stuff.

For Johnson Ng, 46, publisher of a Florida-wide Chinese newspaper, freedom can be about the small things.

"Things are common sense here. Say you have a hole in the wall of your restaurant. OK, so the inspector comes and says, you have two weeks to repair," says Ng. "He doesn't come back three days later and demand money."

Ng (pronounced Eng) has traveled throughout Asia and notes that in many places, money still has to grease palms to get things done, or not done. An unlikely newsman, Ng studied drama and stagecraft in his native Hong Kong. Here he has worked as a chef and as a manager for a bean sprout business in Miami, where he lives.

When Ng became a manager, his father advised him, "Johnson, no matter how well you work for that business, even after 17 years, you will still be somebody else's manager. This is America. You should have your own business."

Not long after, Ng started the United Chinese News of Florida. Once he got the weekly going, his wife became editor. Ng also does photos and reporting.

So he claimed his piece of freedom: "In the U.S., no matter who you are, you have your own environment that you can survive in, and grow."

Robert Taheri is known around Davie for the sage nutritional advice he gives out at his health food store, Simply Natural, which he opened 16 years ago.

Taheri was 14 when he left his native Iran with his family for London, before the revolution that deposed the Shah and launched the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini.

"Before the revolution you could do pretty much everything, have businesses, whatever, although you didn't have freedom of speech 100 per cent," Taheri says. "Now, everything there is restricted because of the Islamic rule."

How about opening up a health foods store? "Ownership is not guaranteed," says Taheri, 47. "They can come anytime and take over the business with different excuses or reasons."

Taheri should know. He not only monitors Iran today on satellite channels but also by staying in touch with two of his brothers, both of whom support democracy in Iran.

His brother Amir has written books about Iran and, according to Taheri, "has interviewed most of the leaders of the world." Amir currently writes for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and El Figaro, among others.

His brother Ali was editor of one of the two major newspapers in Tehran. He fled the country after the revolution, when, according to Taheri, "freedom of the press was immediately demolished."

Ali later signed on with Radio Free Europe in Prague, Czech Republic, which counters the heavily censored Islamic radio. Of Ali, Taheri says: "He is a man of honor telling the truth. He is fighting for the country, not just for himself."